Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Traditionally, apprenticeships were solely demand-led and were confined to the traditional 24 trades. As I said in my initial reply, it is exciting that proposals have been made in respect of 80 new trades by a new batch of employers who are willing to participate. While the roll-out of these proposals will depend on the willingness of employers to take people on, we must also develop the training modules to support them. Partnerships are being forged between various agencies, including education and training boards, private training bodies and institutes of technology, which are developing these programmes. The first batch of 25 programmes will come on stream in the next academic year. We will back that up with a further 35 programmes from category 2. If we can make such a move, I expect that we will double the level of participation in traditional apprenticeships while developing a whole new area of apprenticeship. This will allow us to become more like countries like Germany.

We all admire the way in which the industrial sector there has partnered with the education sector to develop a strong route of apprenticeships which is highly valued. I believe we need to develop such a model here.

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